


A Beginner's Guide to Living with Isak Valtersen

by riyku



Series: Skam Sunday [6]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Ableist Language, M/M, true fucking love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 20:58:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11169966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riyku/pseuds/riyku
Summary: Or, how to live with the love of your life, in five easy to follow steps.





	A Beginner's Guide to Living with Isak Valtersen

**Author's Note:**

> in other news, i'm so dependent on tebtosca it's not even funny.
> 
> eta: this now has a companion, written from Isak's POV: [An Intermediate's Guide to Living with Even Bech Næsheim](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11990715)

**Rule 5:** Let Isak love you. It will spill out of him in a dozen different ways. Isak will get jealous. It's taken you some time to pick up on the signs of it, but now they light up brighter than neon. You never intend to do things that will make him insecure. It's a byproduct of your height, the way you lean close to people in crowded rooms, bow your head toward them so you can hear them better, try to make yourself smaller while you stand next to them. It's your natural inclination to touch everything and everyone because you learn things better that way. Isak will cross the room to stand by your side, grit his teeth and pretend to smile. You will feel the pressure of his hip against yours, his shoulder against your upper arm. The warm weight of his stare will be like coming home worn out and fragile and finally able to lock the door on the day. You will steal the bottle he's drinking from, put your mouth where his has been, then curl your arm around his shoulders. He will melt against you as you press your nose to his temple and your train of thought will get lost. You won't mind. It always begins and ends with him anyway.

He'll worry. He'll mother you and watch you closely and will rarely call you out when you get stoned or drunk. In most cases, he'll be stoned or drunk _with_ you, shouting out shitty pop songs in charmingly bad English on the long walk home after a party, your hands linked together, cocooned inside of the warmth of your coat pocket. The sidewalk will be empty and he'll stop you outside of the reach of the next streetlight. His nose will be red and a little runny from the frigid night, his lips will be cold and chapped and he will peer up at you like he's trying to read your scattered, messy mind. You'll peer back, wishing that he could and hoping that you pass whatever test he's giving you. He'll lift his chin and pull you down and kiss you, grinning into it. He will taste like cheap beer, the joint you shared earlier, sitting near the window in somebody's back bedroom, exhaling into each others mouths until you forgot the point and started adding tongue. His fingers will clutch at your neck and slide into your hair and you will be so unimaginably happy, just then. 

 

 **Rule 4:** Never allow him to wake up alone. Isak hates it, and you hate the idea of him finding a you-shaped hole beside him. You will lay in bed and watch the sunrise color in his face with broad strokes. Study the way his curls lick the skin behind his ear and the perfect fit of your palm on his hipbone. You will create patterns in the moles on his back until they become constellations in your mind, complete with their own mythologies. The stories change and you will never write any of them down. Isak will reach for you before he opens his eyes, gasp like the simple act of waking up is a shock to him every single time, then he'll bury his pillow-creased face in your neck. Sometimes you'll fuck around. Sometimes you'll make him breakfast. 

It will be two months before you realize that on the very rare occasions where Isak wakes up first, he's doing it too.

 

 **Rule 3:** Always say yes, except when you have to say no. Nod along when he asks you to switch over the laundry or take out the trash or pick up beer on the way home. You will bicker about it, say that you did it last time or point out that he still hasn't done the dishes and now the two of you are reduced to drinking out of one suspiciously stained coffee mug, to eating cereal out of the big mixing bowl Eskild gave you, feeding each other with the only clean spoon. You will tell him you're on your way to work and that it will make you late, again. You will rush down the stairs and out the door, hurrying past the neighbor who lives in the apartment below yours with an embarrassed blush. Five minutes into your shift, your thoughts will wander their short distance back to him and you'll sneak into a corner and pull out your phone. Isak will answer with fond exasperation in his voice, cut off your apology before you have time to fully form it. You will always have the best intentions, and he will always forgive you.

The two of you will argue. About little things that don't matter and big things that do. You will forget who started it. Isak will turn sullen and his silence will match yours, and the two of you will occupy the same tiny room like two ghosts who can't see each other. You will go to bed angry, blood boiling in your veins and an ache in your chest as if it might collapse at any minute. The misfiring, self-destructive part of your mind will try to convince you that it feels good, that the apathy you feel when your screwed up body chemistry drags you low is the enemy. Hours later, Isak will crawl in beside you and the heat of his proximity will bleed into your bones and your scooped out chest will fill up again. He will slide his leg across your hips and press his nose into your shoulder and ask you if it has been a mistake. Any of it. All of it. He will sound tired and afraid and very, very young, and you will take his hand, kiss each fingertip in turn then do it again because it wasn't perfect the first time. You will tell him no, that he is the one thing that you're sure of, the one solid thing. In this universe or any other.

 

 **Rule 2:** Tell him everything. Share everything. You see art in the minutiae of the world, will get lost for minutes inspecting the way light reflects off of a mirror or the scatter of raindrops on the hood of a car. Isak will stand beside you, eyebrows up, shifting his weight from foot to foot while you marvel over how the cracks in a particular stretch of sidewalk match the lines in his left hand. Isak sees facts, a world that wants to be untangled and explained, and has a mind for obscure trivia. It's one of your favorite things about him, and you will spend hours watching him study, reading aloud from his textbook because he says it sticks in his head better that way.

Isak will steal your hoodies, your belt and all the blankets and you will not mind. Everything you have already belongs to him. He will catch you using his toothbrush and call you out on it, and you will point out that yours is worn out, and anyway, you have his dick in your mouth pretty much on the regular, so a toothbrush sort of pales in comparison. His laugh will be low and rough as he drops to his knees on the bathroom floor, sucks you off while you stand there gasping, toothpaste foam dripping off of your chin and onto your chest. Isak will steal the toothbrush right from your hand like he's trying to prove a point, and the next day you will find two new ones sitting beside the sink, still in their wrappers.

 

 **Rule 1:** Love every part of him. From the fingernails he bites off and spits onto the floor to the way he always fucks up your coffee. Love it when you find his dirty socks tangled in the sheets of your bed, and when you come home to discover him shyly arranging the wildflowers he picked for you in a cut-open beercan. You will do whatever it takes to prove to him that a boy like you can love a boy like him, and he will tell you everyday that you have nothing to prove. Love him with everything you are and everything you wish you were. That will be the easy part.

\--end

thanks for reading!


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